Message from Nyx: Mother Night
I recently did a storytelling on Nyx as part of a three-year training I am currently doing at the Anima Mundi School. Nyx is the Greek personification of the night, one of the primordial goddesses in Greek mythology, older than all the Olympian gods and in some ways more powerful.
I first encountered her when I was about 15 and wanting to find a name for my first ever email address. I was with a friend at the school library. We took an encyclopedia from the shelf and opened it up randomly and pointed to an entry. I landed on Nyx and I remember there was only one line: Personification of night in Greek mythology. I liked the name and I liked the meaning, and so my first hotmail address was born.
Fast forward many years later. Overstimulated by the light of the Summer Solstice, I noticed for the first time that we do not celebrate the return of the dark on this day - instead we celebrate that it is the longest day of the year. This is in stark contrast to the Winter Solstice which is usually celebrated as the return of the light.
I felt this imbalance - injustice even - in my bones, and with it, a desire to return to Nyx, to explore what wisdom she might still hold for us ‘moderners’ - how she might view our world today.
So I am sharing this text, written from her point of view. Perhaps we need not worship her, yet I cannot help but wonder what might happen if we held a little more reverence for the night, the dark and all that Nyx and the Children of the Night represent?
In the beginning of everything, when all was formless Chaos, I, Nyx - Night - came forth.
Gaia (the Earth), Tartarus (the Underworld) and Erebus (Darkness) came into being at the same time - except that time did not yet exist for we are older even than time.
I immediately recognized Erebus - Dark - as my counterpart and of our union Aether, Light and Hemera, Day, were born.
You Moderners worship the light. You revel in it. Yet the light takes credit for what only Night made possible.
For I - Mother Night - am the creative source beneath all that exists. The Dark Mother of all.
I was there in the beginning and I shall be there until the end.
I am your mother, too. Yet you no longer recognize me.
I have been shunned. My eyes stabbed by the flash of a neon light that splits the night that you call progress.
And still I remain.
Dwelling as I always have in the depths of the Underworld, in Tartarus. It has been said that a bronze anvil falling from the earth would take nine nights and nine days to reach the depths of Tartarus. Deeper than deep. Darker than your mortal mind can even fathom. This is home.
At the end of every day, I leave my cave and move across the sky and the earth and the oceans with my chariot and my trusty black horses, covering the earth with my dark cloak.
In my hand I carry an extinguished, inverted torch. I have no need of light.
At the close of every night, I return. My daughter Hemera, Day, steps out past me without a word, and light returns to the world. Our paths do not cross. They are not meant to. This is the sacred order - night and day, dark and light, dusk and dawn - a cosmic rhythm so ancient it is taken for granted, like the air you breathe.
Like the Egyptian goddess Nut, who swallowed the sun god Ra each evening and gave birth to him again each morning - so I, too, gave birth to Day.
And yet you Moderners glorify Day and curse the Night. On the Winter Solstice, the return of the light is celebrated yet why does nobody celebrate the return of the dark at the Summer Solstice?
Do you not see all the Dark makes possible?
Did you not gestate in the dark of your mother’s womb?
Have you not known the wisdom that can only be found in a dark night of the Soul?
Appreciated the mystery of not knowing?
Stood in awe before the Unconscious?
What about the dark rooms of creativity?
The dark is not absence. It is where life gathers, preparing to come forth.
It is a time of retreat, of rest, of gestation.
Yet you have forgotten how to stop. To be in the stillness. In the solitude. To rest in the not knowing. To surrender to the void. To die while you are still alive.
Do you forget that you spend a third of your life in my arms? Life is not only what happens during the Day.
My children, they are my pride, my greatest creations. Some I conceived with Erebus. Others I brought forth alone, from my own depths:
Death. Doom. Old Age. Sleep. Nightmares. Dreams. Discord. Nemesis. The Fates. The Gorgons.
We have been called Terrible.
We have been called Great.
What we are is inevitable. We form the tapestry of cosmic order - all that cannot be outrun, outwitted, dominated or outlasted. This is the proper order of the cosmos.
Oh, but I see you trying. I see the Botox, the surgeries, the frantic bargaining with Old Age.
I see the cup after cup of coffee, the blue-lit screens, the refusal to let Sleep come.
I see you dismiss your dreams by morning and live as though free will were the whole story, the only story. Do you truly believe Fate cannot touch you? Look honestly.
We hold power that neither your technology nor your medicine nor your willpower can touch.
The Norse had their three Norns - great maiden goddesses who ruled the fate of gods and mortals alike. It is said their name meant the ones who communicate quietly, by whispering.
I too have no need to shout.
I whisper. And I wait. You may not hear me. But I am always there - underneath, before, beneath the foundation of all things.
Let me tell you a story that still makes me smile.
My son Hypnos once made Zeus fall asleep at his wife, Hera’s, request. When Zeus awoke and learned he had been tricked, he flew into a rage and hunted Hypnos across the heavens. Hypnos fled to my cave and Zeus chased him until he came to my threshold.
Then he stopped.
Even he knew better.
Do you understand the difference between surrender and brute force? Between power so certain of itself it can whisper, and power so afraid it must always shout?
Those who fear me fear themselves unmasked. For in my realm there are no garments, no titles, no performances.
Like Inanna descending, you must enter naked and bowed low. Each night, when you sleep, you are alone with yourself - unadorned, undefended, finally honest.
In restless dreams you walk alone.
Hello darkness my old friend, I’ve come to talk to you again.